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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

If you read other forums, what used to be a quick and efficient boarding process has gotten out of control and the efficiency has disappeared.

Between preboarding dozens of wheelchair-bound passengers (who get up and run off the plane at the destination) and taking valuable time to settle fights between passengers saving seats for others with purses and jackets... it's just not worth it anymore.

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> dozens of wheelchair-bound passengers (who get up and run off the plane at the destination)

That is definitely not a normal (or even believable) occurrence

Of course it's not normal, but it happens all the time. These people hacked the system. When the processes are terrible, people will find a way around them if it's available.

I have never seen this in my decades of flying SW.

There are eyewitness accounts all over the net.

Here's a (viral) photo of 20 wheelchairs at FLL, 17 of them ran off the plane: https://x.com/trendready/status/1672734536545841153

There was someone on Reddit that counted 45.

Other accounts from last December, noting the trend and including SWA's reply that they don't challenge the validity of people in wheelchairs: https://viewfromthewing.com/priority-boarding-scandal-is-sou...

That’s easily solvable by seating wheelchair-bound passengers in the back of the plane so they have to wait to get off.

The issue is more about loading times. Every minute the aircraft is on the ground is a minute they're not making money.

If a 737 used to take 60 minutes to unload and load and now it takes 90 or more, there's a problem.

When SWA first started, the target was 10 minutes to turn a plane around. They were literally taxiing out of the gate while people were still getting seated.

https://southwest50.com/our-stories/a-turning-point-the-birt...

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